Pressure and Pain
by flutflutflyer
Summary: Attending Pema and Tenzin's wedding was the worst decision Lin Beifong has made in her entire life. Pemzin, Linzin. One-shot.


A/N: Dedicated to Lin Beifong. I hereby declare June 16th to be Lin Beifong day, now and forever. The world salutes you.

Inspired by a conversation I wrote in _A Handful of Dust_.

And I was right about the Equalists attacking Air Temple Island. I wish I hadn't been.

* * *

Attending the wedding is the worst idea she has ever had. It's not as if she was going to be his best man, and being one of Pema's bridesmaids would have slaughtered her and roasted her in the fiery depths of the Spirit World.

Somehow, even as they talked of leaving each other forever, even as he moved his things back to Air Temple Island, even as the wedding was being planned, she didn't truly believe it was going to happen.

But it was.

And it is.

At least there is no one here on the cliff, the guests no doubt enjoying the festivities, smiling and waving as cameras snap photographs of the Last Airbender and his new wife, as though they are little more than shadows on the wall, paper cut-outs, finger puppets dutifully playing their roles of love, marriage, and a baby carriage. None of them is a real, living person with thoughts, feelings, and emotions, and none of them—_none of them_—understands the pain in her chest, the pain that started scarcely a month ago with the announcement and steadily, venomously spread through her entire body, until she is nothing but skin and thrumming pain just below, threatening to overflow, to drown her, to burst from her centre, a daemon of grief and love.

She chuckles bitterly.

Grief and love.

The _air chakra_.

"Where's the love in this?" Her bare feet sink slightly into the ground, as if it, too, is trying to swallow her as deeply as the denial dragged into despair. "She's going to end up breeding babies the rest of her life, every few years if not _every_ year, in a last desperate attempt to shoot airbender populations up." The irony of it all—the air chakra of love, the love that could not be—cuts her more than the sharp edge of her mother's rock slicing into the flesh of her face, iron on her tongue and iron in her hands, the metal bending under her will from the pressure and pain. It's always been pressure and pain for her. And she knows that it will never be different, not until the day the pressure is too great and the pain is too fierce, and she falls to the earth that cradled her as a child, broken, used, spent. But that day is a long time coming.

A long time coming.

"Lin?" His voice startles her, hurts her, digs its claws into her spirit and throws it over the side of the cliff into the sea. It doesn't matter. Where she's going, she doesn't need her spirit anymore. "What are you doing out here?"

"Tenzin." She doesn't turn around. Another woman would feel tears come streaming down her face as her heart shattered into a thousand glittering pieces. But she's not another woman. Her heart is made of metal, the only tears the ones she knows shimmer in his eyes, dark grey like the coming storm. "My seismic sense didn't pick you up."

His form visualises itself, his vibrations so familiar to her that she no longer needs to concentrate to sense him exactly as he is, down to the frown distorting his features. "The old air-walking trick, I'm afraid."

Memories of hiding from her mother's wrath by living a second life a centimetre above the ground flit through her mind like birds, every feather another reason her heart must be metal. "Mother never did figure that one out." A conversation as false and unreal as the smiles in the photos taken on this night, the night of a crescent moon a leer, tormenting her with the fact that twenty years of dating meant nothing, and in the end the only thing she has is her status as chief of police. The day that changes is the day she forgets why she made her sacrifice. The day that changes is the day she will bend, break, and die. And still the moon leers.

She wonders if her mother ever knew what the moon looks like.

"Is it over yet?" she asks.

He shakes his head, stroking that beard she loves and Pema hates. "It's the largest celebration of the year, Lin." His footsteps are lighter than dust settling. He moves to put his hand on her shoulder, but she takes a smooth step sideways, her iron armour creaking as she puts her hands on her hips.

"Oh, yes. The entire world is here to congratulate a nation of one."

"Soon to be more."

For the first time that night, she turns her head and looks at him. The mask of happiness has fallen away, leaving him vulnerable, sorrowful, sick with heartache. "I know, Tenzin." Her fingers curl tightly around her arms, digging into the metal. Pressure and pain. "I know."

"I didn't mean it like that."

Her voice is unnecessarily harsh. "You did."

Silence between them.

"What if you had your life to live over, Lin?" He looks away, his usual strength replaced with this strange weakness, a weakness that frightens her. The man who was her rock for years transformed into a limp rag?

Her mouth tastes of copper. "What do you mean?"

"Would you still choose your position as chief of police?" She can hear the pain wracking his body, sense the shaking of his shoulders, somehow contain the urgent need to embrace him and calm his shivers. "Or would you choose . . . love?"

"Give me ten years, Tenzin. Then perhaps I'll answer you." The words whisper away to the sky like a handful of dust, the unspoken question of _what about you? _hanging as a thread between them, tying them together. "You should return to the festivities. Some might be wondering where the groom is on the most important night of his life."

He moves to touch her again. This time, she allows the contact, the warmth of his palm on her shoulder hurting her more than she thought possible. "Where will you be?"

"Where I always am." She remembers her childhood, a conspicuous hole left where her mother's husband—her father—should have been. "I stand alone."

His footsteps die away, each laden with more grief than the last, leaving her, as always, by herself.

Pressure and pain.

That's all it has ever been.

That's all it will ever be.


End file.
